How idiotic these "race realist" types are! -- the reason "white working class neighborhood of the mid twentieth century" no longer exist is because no one wants to be a "white working class" person living in a "white working class neighborhood", and certainly not with a "mid twentieth century" lifestyle ... but they do seem to want someone else to be that and live there and at that level of material deprivation. As witness both the item of May 27 and the addition of May 28.

Lamenting the passing of "the old neighborhood" -- that you willingly moved away from, because you could lead an easier and more materially abundant live elsewhere -- makes no more sense than people born in the big, empty rectangular States, living in California, and lamenting the on-going depopulation of said BERSs.

My father's people were Southern sharecroppers (well, following the Civil War and other "reversals," they were) ... and you will *never* catch me waxing nostalgic for the passing of that mode of (just barely) living.

My father, after coming North (essentially abandoning the land that he, even as a sharecropper, had managed to purchase at the age of 16), frequently worked two and even three jobs to support his family -- we were poor, and, contrary to the famous saying, we knew it -- and you will *never* catch me waxing nostalgic for the passing of that mode of (just barely) living.

Though, you might catch me lamenting the abandonment of the land, which, at the time, was nearly worthless, for it had never been logged. Still, he chose to feed us in preference to paying the taxes on the land, and for that I am grateful.

edit:
My hometown, South Bend, had those quaint ethnic "white working class neighborhood of the mid twentieth century" when my mother was growing up in the 1930s and 40s. And just as with black and Mexican neighborhoods today, the emphasis was on the 'ethnic' part of "ethnic neighborhood" ... a Pole wasn't safe in a Hungarian neighborhood, nor again either in an Irish neighborhood, and vice versa. The *reason* that South Bend (and no doubt other industrial cities with multiple non-British ethnic groups) had so many small Catholic parishes is that their ethnicity and old-world hatreds were more important to them than their claimed Christianity and common, if somewhat new, Americanness.

I say, thank God that the grandchildren of all those early 20th century ethnic immigrants abandoned "the old neighborhood" and became just regular old Americans.

...Life scientists think in lock-step and no skepticism or doubt is allowed. This narrowing of view is not just an after effect, it is a powerful constraint and influence on the science, for all findings are interpreted according to the dogma. That recent study on the evolutionary origin of turtles is a typical example.

The evolution of turtles has always been a problem. ...

The new study purports to resolve the dilemma (they say the evidence is overwhelming that turtles evolved from a common ancestor of birds and crocodilians). And how did they solve the problem? They used the so-called UCEs (ultra conserved elements) and their flanking regions. But there is one problem: UCEs falsify [Darwinian] evolution.

That is, at least, what one evolutionist told me years ago [I, too, had been told that by a True Believer biologist-in-training -- it was, after all, a common trope amongst Darwinists at the time, in must the same way that they all repeat the quip about the Pre-Cambrian Rabbit, as though they've said something meaningful, and as though they've driven a stake in the ground from which they will not retreat, upon pain of incoherence], before UCEs were discovered. Identical or nearly identical functionally unconstrained DNA sequences, conserved broadly across different species, would undoubtedly falsify evolution. That falsifier was discovered in the form of UCEs.

Indeed, one evolutionist exclaimed “I about fell off my chair” when seeing the UCE comparisons. Surely these absurdly conserved sequences must be utterly essential. But hundreds of tests failed to reveal their importance. In fact many of the sequences could be removed altogether with little effect.

But of course, as usual, that [the claim made by Darwinists before the discovery of UCE sequences that such a hypothetical discovery would falsify Darwinism] was Darwinian Doublespeak as we were told to move along yet again. No one so much as whispered a word of doubt about evolution and the scene returned to normal, just as in the Star Wars bar scene. Evolution is still a fact, UCEs or no UCEs.

So now, years later, UCEs not only are no longer a problem for the evolutionary mind, they may freely be used as evidence for [Darwinistic] evolution. The fact of [Darwinistic] evolution is a self-fulfilling prophecy. Evidence, no matter how contradictory, is interpreted according to [Darwinistic] evolution, and then recruited as yet more proof texts for [Darwinistic] evolution.

The turtle story is not merely another tale of contradictory data that make little sense on evolution. It is another example of the closing of the evolutionary mind.

Anyone who has ever tried to reason with DarwinDefenders has seen this sort of bait-and-switch regarding what possible discoveries would falsify Darwinism.

Now, regardless of what any DarwinDefender did or did not say, and regardless of whether he did or did not have standing to proclaim what would or would not falsify Darwinism -- use your own mind. [edit: already in the comments, I see that one DarwinDefender is attempting that ploy; so, again, I say: use your own mind]

'Ultra Conserved Elements' are identical, or nearly so, stretches of DNA sequences found within the so-called "junk DNA" of species that, according to Darwinism, are separated by tens or even hundreds of millions of years of divergent descent. By the very logic of Darwinism, such as it is, since these UCEs are still identical, or nearly so, after all that "evolution", then they must be vital to the life processes of the individual organism.

Yet, as Mr Hunter makes reference, when scientists run experiments in which they "knock-out" UCEs in a fertilized egg (of say, a mouse or rabbit), and allow that organism to mature into an adult of its species, they do not observe deleterious effects upon the organism – that is, UDEs do not appear to be vital to the life processes of the individual organism.

Yet, if Darwinism were true, and these DNA sequences are not vital to the life processes of the individual organism, as they appear not to be, then there is nothing at all to prevent them becoming randomly mutated -- such that they would not be "ultra conserved" even from one generation to the next, much less for scores of thousands of generations.

Use your own mind -- use your own ability to reason logically -- disregard the DarwinDefenders and their fits of hysteria: see the logical necessity that:
1) IF Darwinism is true, THEN any stretch of DNA not vital to the life processes of the individual organism is utterly free to become randomly mutated in any direction, such that even sibling organisms can have divergent DNA sequences in such non-vital stretches of DNA;
2) IF Darwinism is true, THEN 'Ultra Conserved Elements' must be vital to the life processes of the individual organism;
3) Multiple scientific experiments have failed to find evidence that 'Ultra Conserved Elements' are vital to the life processes of the individual organism;
4) Ergo, UCEs scientifically falsify Darwinism.

(*) Trying to reason with a Darwinist True Believer is as futile as trying to reason with a Marxist or a Freudian, and for much the same reason. Trying to reason with a DarwinDefender is as futile as trying to reason with the typical 'atheist' or Moslem, and for much the same reason. Trying to reason with a Darwinist is as futile as trying to reason with the typical "liberal" or socialist, to say nothing of hard-code leftist, and for much the same reason.

Or, to put it in simpler terms: "All rational argumnent, and all rational knowledge, ultimately stands on a non-rational base of intuitive knowledge."

As C S Lewis put it: "All explanations come to an end." We can explain/argue that 'Alpha' is true because 'Beta' is true. When someone denies 'Beta', we can explain/argue that 'Beta' is true because 'Gamma' is true. But, ultimately, no matter what the subject, we get to 'Omega', which we believe (or deny) to be self-evidently true.

Those persons who claim that capital-R Reason is their great motivation, and who generally assert the howler that capital-R Reason disallows the reality of God - that is, those who make an idol of ‘Reason!’ (so long as it can be made to appear to support their God-denial) -- tend not to admit the foregoing. For, to admit it cuts the idol off at the knees.

William Vallicella:

All I am maintaining -- and to some this may sound trivial -- is that every real-life argument that does dialectical work must have one or more asserted premises. And so while argument is in general superior to bare assertion, argument does not free us of the need to make assertions. I insist on this so that we do not make the mistake of overvaluing argumentation.

While possibly a trivial point to maintain, it is also something that many persons, perhaps most, do not understand, and many refuse to understand. Thus, it is important to make the point.

Logical reasoning is all but incapable of discovering a new truth that is not already implicit in the truth we already know; not entirely incapable, but very close to that. Rather, the great strength of logical reasoning is to identify error -- to show us that what we thought was true (or want to believe is true) is not actually true.

======
In his essay, in explaining his point and purpose, Vallicella writes:

Suppose a person asserts that abortion is morally wrong. Insofar forth, a bare assertion which is likely to elicit the bare counter-assertion, 'Abortion is not morally wrong.' What can be gratuitously asserted may be gratuitously denied without breach of logical propriety, a maxim long enshrined in the Latin tag Quod gratis asseritur, gratis negatur. So one reasonably demands arguments from those who make assertions. Here is one:

Infanticide is morally wrong
There is no morally relevant difference between abortion and infanticide
Ergo
Abortion is morally wrong.

Someone who forwards this argument in a concrete dialectical situation in which he is attempting to persuade himself or another asserts the premises and in so doing provides reasons for accepting the conclusion. This goes some distance toward removing the gratuitousness of the conclusion. But what about the premises? If they are mere assertions, then the conclusion, though proximately non-gratuitous (because supported by reasons), is not ultimately non-gratuitous (because no support has been provided for the premises).

My purpose here is not to deny the above, but to use it to make an important tangential point.

The above argument against abortion is logically sound - as any honest man will admit - and so, those who profit from abortion, in order to maintain their assertion that abortion is not wicked, is not a grave moral evil, must deny one of the two premises. Historically, the pro-abortionists have denied the second premise, in this manner: “Well, sure, *everyone* knows that infanticide is morally wrong. But, it isn’t true that abortion is morally equivalent to infanticide. ”

And, since far too many Americans wanted to believe the lies of the so-called Sexual Revolution, that mere denial of the moral equivalency of the two acts was enough to get a critical mass of the public on board the abortion train.

And so, here we are, 50 million murdered American children later, and now the immoral vipers of “liberalism” (as we currently use the term) are beginning to agrue:

Abortion is not morally wrong
There is no morally relevant difference between abortion and infanticide
Ergo
Infanticide is not morally wrong.

My purpose here is not to rant about the intellectually dishonesty of leftists and “liberals”, important though it is for everyone to understand that truth.

Rather, my purpose it to come back to a perennial point -- the “liberals”, the puppets of the leftists, keep kicking (so-called) conservative/traditionalist ass in the ‘Culture Wars’ because most of the people who think themselves conservative are really “liberals” under the hood - most people who think themselves conservative already accept certain key leftist assumptions undergirding “liberalism” or “progressivism”.

There are 50 million legally-murdered American children - for which on-going sin, 'legal' though it may be, God is even now judging the American nation - because the people who have thought themselves to be opposing abortion for the past 45-50 years have consciously and deliberately declined to forcefully assert and argue that “There is no morally relevant difference between abortion and infanticide”. And, the reason they declined to make that case is because to do so logically and inescapably leads to the conclusion that “There is no morally relevant difference between the woman who hires a man to murder her toddler and the one who hires a man to murder her unborn child”.

This constant refusal to judge, this refusal to forthrightly maintain that sin is sin, even when committed by women, this constant refusal to hold women accountable for their sin -- this making of women protected idols which may never be criticized nor condemned -- is exactly the same "liberal" impulse that directed so-called conservatives to join the “liberals” in freaking-out when Rush Limbaugh implied that a certain self-identified slut just might be a slut.

The people who have imagined for the past 45-50 that they were opposing abortion reasoned thusly: "It would not be tactically advantageous to argue that 'There is no morally relevant difference between abortion and infanticide' because that would 'alienate' too many people (especially women) in its 'judgmentalism'." In other words, better that many millions of innocent human lives be cruelly snuffed out than that one woman, precious snowflake that she is, admit to herself, "I am a sinner (just like men are) ... and I have murdered my baby."

'Truth is One' -- and trimming on the truth here must always lead to trimming on the truth there.

Now, there is a second major root of this refusal to judge women, and that is in the corruption of the natural masculine impulse to protect women. In prior generations, men would acknowledge that a slut was a slut -- yet, contrary to feminist mythology and propaganda, in "the bad old days" it was more the women, than the men, who organized and then applied and maintained the judging and condemning of specific/individual sluts (*) -- because they rightly understood that in doing so they were helping to protect their own daughters (and sisters and mothers) from the temptations of some son-on-a-bitch Lothario.

But, we're all "liberals" now, we almost all of us implicitly accept or explicitly assert the leftist lie that is is immoral to make moral judgments. And, we're all "feminists" now, we almost all of us implicitly accept or explicitly assert the leftist lie that men and women are exactly equal. And, we're all libertines now, we almost all of us implicitly accept or explicitly assert the leftist-and-libertine lie that men are "naturally promiscuous", and the second lie that "in the bad old days" it was the men who winked at the sexual incontenance of other men while reacting in murderous rage to any woman who "made a little mistake".

Taken together, acceptance of these lies leads to the false beliefs that:
1) it is natural for human beings to be sexually promiscuous and incontenant;
2) to prove their "equality" with men, women must be as sexually incontenant as men (supposedly) are;
3) it is a grave moral flaw and error to condemn sexual incontenance, epecially of "liberated" women;

Yet, the natural masculine impulse to protect women has not gone away. Rather, the leftists have intentionally turned it on its head, even as they publically deny its validity, such that we now see well-meaning, and utterly misguided, men "defending" women by defending the moral-rightness of their freedom to destroy themselves while simultaneously poisoning the lives of all around them.

(*) Men tend to the abstract, women to the concrete. In the "bad old days", men tended more to condemn sluttery-in-the-abstract than actual individual sluts, whom they tended to see as "women who made a mistake and got caught" -- which, even then, tended to fire up their masculine need/drive to protect women. On the other hand, women tended more to condemn actual individual sluts -- whom they saw as potential competitors for masculine protectiveness.